If you hope to make it through the day without losing all hope in humanity, you may not wish to read the following thoughts on Ray and Janay Rice from our old friend from The Spearhead, W.F. Price.

I know people instinctively and reflexively sympathize with the victim of a brutal attack, but …

Yeah, I’m giving you all one more chance to back out of this right now, because we all know that nothing good is going to come after that “but.”

… there comes a time when one has to ask whether or not the victim bears some responsibility for putting herself in this situation. Does Janay really think that will be the last time Rice gives her a beatdown? And even if she does, what statement is she making in marrying a man willing to treat her like that?

The statement is clear: she thinks the violence is a reasonable tradeoff for whatever she gets in return for her relationship, whether it’s sexual gratification, status or money. …

But feminists would have us believe that domestic violence is a patriarchal imposition, despite the fact that married women in patriarchal families suffer the lowest rates of domestic violence of all partnered women in the United States.

In fact, study after study after study after study find that domestic violence rates tend to be highest amongst those with traditional – that is, patriarchal – values.

Let’s let Price continue, as we haven’t even gotten to the worst stuff yet.

Maybe feminists think the patriarchy has secretly implanted little chips in women’s brains that lead them to seek out men who will beat them up.

Somehow, instead of choosing granola-crunching lesbians, these women make a beeline for musclebound athletes, beefy bikers and ghetto thugs.

How many different types of bigotry can he fit into one sentence? I count three.

But maybe it isn’t the patriarchy. Maybe there’s something about female sexuality that defies feminist ideals. Perhaps it’s kind of a chaotic, anarchic thing that doesn’t pay attention to pronouncements about what’s right and proper.

Maybe, just maybe, the only way to really cut down on intimate violence would be to restrict women’s sexual freedom.

Oh, but Price stops just short of explicitly advocating that men should be put in charge of women’s sexuality.

Would I advocate for that? No. As adults, women should make their own decisions in that regard. However, to blame men in general for the results of women’s sexual decisions is absolutely unacceptable.

As terrible as Price’s post is, the comments from The Spearhead’s regulars are, as usual, even worse.

According to the fellow who calls himself TFH,

The biggest error that Western Civ ever made was assuming that women could be ‘adults’. …

The woman’s brain-gina interface is obsolete. She is programmed to get gina tingles from men who were suited to excel in the world of pre-historic times, while she is programmed to be revulsed by the man who would have fared poorly then (the introverted STEM guys of today).

One cannot fully understand why women write love letters to serial killers and continue to get back with violent boyfriends, without also realizing the hate that women have for tech nerds, and how there is an obsessive push to divert tech money to women (i.e. they hate that money is appearing in the hands of men their gina does not tingle for).

Again, the brain-gina interface of women is obsolete. That is the most complete explanation.

Back in The Spearhead’s comment section, meanwhile, Eric J Schlegel trots out some evo-psych just-so stories to buttress a similarly backwards conclusion:

Women get the ‘gina tingle from the alpha male because, from an evolutionary perspective, those are the genes that contribute to survival. Trouble is, those same sociopathic thugs are not at all any use as protector and provider, so she takes the results of her selective breeding, along with her black eye, and finds a beta schlub provider to help raise them. … [P]erhaps others here have similar stories where female aquaintances chose assholes in their hormoned youth, only to settle for a nice guy with 3-4 thug bastards in tow. Women such as the one you’ve talked about here are those who have not overcome their animal instincts, every bit as much as the men who put them in ICU. The authority that a man used to have over his daughters as well as his sons used to act as somewhat of a check on this social dynamic, but we all know what happened to that…

I think it’s safe to say that if you ever run across a dude who refers to “‘ginas” instead of “vaginas” you should run as far away as your legs will take you.

Someone called Stoltz concludes

This is what happens when a society tells women they are equal – no,no – superior – to men. Movies and TV shows that show a female character acting like a hellish b*tch, goings around kicking everyone’s rearends. … Feminist and a feminist-backed government who tell women they have no responsibilities, and all the rights, so they believe they can do whatever they please to whoever (of course, the ‘whoever’ are men).

Meanwhile, another commenter suggests that the only solution is “to repeal the civil rights laws that prevent people from keeping ‘those’ people out.” Yet another declares that “Ray Rice triggers my gaydar pretty hard” and suggests that Janay “looks like a tranny.”

Price himself shows up with some comments even worse than his post, arguing that abused women stick with their abusers

because it feels good. Having a dominant man is a pleasurable feeling for a lot of women. It’s like a shot of dope for a heroin addict, who knows that he’s taking a big risk each time he injects the drug into his arm, but can’t stop himself from doing so anyway.

Just a couple days ago there was a power outage where I live due to some construction/maintenance in the area. I had to go to a nearby hotspot to do some work online and so did a few neighbors. One of my neighbors was an ordinary, middle-aged woman. She left her phone on speaker for some reason, and she got a call from her man that I heard as clear as day. He called, and then when she didn’t pick up immediately I could hear him yelling at her in a threatening manner for not answering promptly. Then, the guy demanded she get power of attorney over her mother so he could drain the old lady’s bank account, and when she raised reasonable objections to it he was insistent and angry. I was just shaking my head, but this mild-mannered, very plain 40-something white lady looked positively radiant upon receiving this kind of violent attention from her thuggish, scumbag boyfriend.

Comments

The abuse in our (human) society is so prevalent that we usually don’t even notice it. But there are those who have had the luck not to grow up in it and they often do not understand how being imprinted with abuse in one’s formative years shapes one’s life choices (for those folks I’d recommend Alice Miller’s important book, “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”).

But then there are also those who, like the misogynists discussed here, just blithely blame the victims, enjoying the release of their own aggression in the process and absolving themselves of responsibility for their own dirty deeds. (It is easy to see that online misogynists have violent tendencies themselves.)

Perhaps dear ol’ WTF hasn’t caught up with the number crunchers lately. Anyone in this area knows that there’s been a decline in IPV, particularly murders. The rates at which women are murdered by partners and ex-partners has been dropping steadily. Importantly for people who claim an interest in men’s welfare, the rates at which women murder their male partners has dropped much further much faster.

The answer to this perplexing, mysterious, social phenomenon is pretty simple. Access to no fault divorce proceedings along with the availability of DV refuges means that women aren’t reduced to killing their abusive male partners because they see no other way to escape. They move out instead.

Violent men are now much. less. likely. to be killed by women partners. Feminists don’t expect gratitude from the likes of WTF, but he at least could gain a little closer familiarity with reality even if he doesn’t like it much.

First off, of all the apes, humans have some of the least sexual dimorphism. There’s a few signs kicking around our genes that there might have been a few different types of sexual selection going on at different times, but none of it is conclusive or holds up today. The evidence would seem to indicate that our species has gone through at least three or four different breeding strategies since we split from chimps.

I’m sorry dorabella, but the heroin addict analogy does not make sense. Women stay with abusive men for many reasons, but “needing” or “wanting” to be abused is not one of them. Abusers have many clever ways of stopping you from leaving them – manipulation, economic control, fear of them killing you if you leave, fear of them taking your children, they tell you they will kill themselves, they act crazy or depressed and don’t take proper care of themselves, they threaten your family, they twist your reasoning around so you think it’s all your fault and feel guilty for making them feel bad. An abused woman is not being self destructive, she is being destroyed by someone else.

So let me get this straight, women who choose men who turn out to be violent to be in relationships with have no one else but themselves to blame, but men who choose women who treat them badly and supposedly rip them off in a divorce, or only want them for their paycheck are blameless and there is nothing they could have done about it; in short, they are the ultimate victims. Got it. /sarcasm

Phoenician – That’s what I’m wondering, apparently early humans were in fact solitary predators rather than social creatures that relied on teamwork for defense and sustenance. All these manospherians seem to think early humans were mostly some sort of Conan archetype and that’s how our species rose to prominence. It’s this weird baseline assumption behind this “evopsych” nonsense that somehow, someway being and unbearable asshole is a positive survival trait. I suppose when you have no sense of empathy the only way to justify it is by pretending it’s actually a superpower to be a sociopath.

The monumental ego combined with ignorance in this Alpha Male crap is so wrong it should be studied. The claim that men who are on the larger more athletic side are stupid and violent, that’s why women evolved to want them instead of the super intellectual gentle men who are pinnacles of evolution who can’t get laid because no one like them ever succeeded in reproducing in the past is almost stunning. Just look at it! Isn’t it amazing? The fractal wrongness of it makes me stand in awe of what people are capable of. It’s like a stain glass window made of stupid.

You’re right. I forgot to account for the fact the betas aren’t producing offspring.

Yah, the only source of beta offspring is the four heterozygous women. Each one produces 1 beta boy and 1 heterozygous girl per generation, and that’s the entire incidence of the a allele. Each generation of 4 Aa women produces the next generation of 4 Aa women, and the beta boys go into the evolutionary bit bucket.

Of course, this is way oversimplified, but complicating it only makes things worse for the beta men. The math assumes all children survive to adulthood. If you introduce a 25% child mortality rate, each of those heterozygous girls has a 1 in 4 chance of not living to reproducing age. As long as you don’t get super unlucky in the early generations and lose all of one gender, eventually the a allele disappears as all the heterozygous girls perish prior to having kids of their own. The kids who have the A allele multiply quickly enough that a 25% mortality rate does not put them in danger of extinction.

Another complication is that the evopsych story is that the women are flocking to the alpha men because the alpha men have a better chance of survival, due to something on the A allele that makes them strong and amazing. Is it actually fair to assume that women gain nothing from the A allele? In all likelihood, the homozygous women get a boost from their double A that the heterozygous women don’t get. Male mate selection is a thing. Maybe the alpha men preferentially mate with homozygous women, rather than humping anything that comes their way. Again, the a allele suffers reduced reproductive fitness and eventually disappears.

Having the beta men reproduce a couple of times each generation only prolongs the agony. It doesn’t halt the decline.

There is also the fact that few genes express fully in isolation. Most genetic traits come from a combination of genes, but this doesn’t actually help the evopsych story very much.

I’ve been trying to think of ways the evopsych story works. Maybe if the A allele is lethal when homozygous, but confers an advantage when heterozygous. The AY boys survive. So do the Aa girls. The AA girls die.

In this case the population barely grows. The original AA woman doesn’t exist. The remaining three produce an F1 generation with the proportions:
4 Aa
2 AY
2 aY

Subsequent generations show the proportions:

4 Aa
4 AY
4 aY

This population can increase only if each woman pumps out more than 4 kids apiece. I suppose that’s doable.

But. Each generation has 50% of the girls die from a genetic disease, and the men outnumber the women 2 to 1. This does not reflect the reality we see around us, so this doesn’t work either.

I’ve read several articles over the past few days related to why women stay in abusive relationships. The reasons are extremely complicated and without detailed knowledge of the specifics of the relationship, we can never know exactly what happened or why. I think it does a disservice to victims to simplify the abusive situations, as some of these men are trying to do. Saying that women are evolutionarily driven toward abusive men is just thinly veiled victim blaming.

This piece is very descriptive about her reasons for staying. Sometimes when you are in a situation, you can’t see it clearly. On top of that, many abusers will also isolate victims from their friends and family. The victim can’t see how bad the situation actually is and no one is allowed close enough to tell them.

t’s beyond silly to say that any woman who is getting smacked around thinks it’s acceptable to be smacked around. No one knows better than a woman who is being abused that it is wrong. Not leaving isn’t the same as consent. I stayed because I was traumatized and isolated. I believed that Hank really loved me and that no man with less passion/ anger (those words were conflated for me) would ever love me like him.

The reasons are extremely complicated and without detailed knowledge of the specifics of the relationship, we can never know exactly what happened or why.

The reasons also differ from person to person. It’s easy for someone who is comfortably middle-class with a full support structure to say, “I would definitely leave if my partner started to hit me.” There are so many different ways in which a situation could differ from the one experienced by Judgey McJudgerson’s. Maybe Judgey really would leave if Partner became abusive. But maybe Partner would hold a child or a pet hostage. Maybe Partner would do a “choose me or them” with all of Judgey’s friends and family, and only start the physical abuse once the support structure is gone. Maybe Partner has all the money. Maybe Judgey has been convinced that leaving is pointless. Maybe maybe maybe maybe so many reasons why people don’t do That One Thing That You, Personally, Has Decided Is the Correct Course of Action.

“Maybe Partner would do a “choose me or them” with all of Judgey’s friends and family, and only start the physical abuse once the support structure is gone.”

I recall one (elderly) manurespherian openly saying just that: he was looking forward to the nearest future when his wife’s family members would die out so that he could fully implement his “dread game” in their relationship.

Isolating their wives from their family and friends and any other possible support systems is one of the classic abusers’ tactics. (There is a reason why all those poormenz at Dalrock’s bitch and moan about the modern church being “feminized” — i.e., no longer blatantly endorsing the husband’s abuse of his wife and children.)

That’s the first time I’ve heard of someone consciously ascribing their own will to abuse and manipulate. I know everyone will pile on me again for ablism or whatever, but isn’t that clearly sociopathic behavior?

So, Bill Price is married to a pretty woman, and has a third kid now (his first wife was also pretty).

In the meantime, Manboobz cannot even get a date.

Gee… who should a man listen to?

How about listening to the one who isn’t victim-blaming? How about to the one who is a decent human being? See, here’s the thing: marrying an attractive person and having kids proves jack shit about your worth as a human.

.Thank you for all the scientific take-downs of the “alpha-fucks, beta-bucks” myth. The biology nerd in me enjoyed it very much.

One point not mentioned; violent men are a threat to a woman’s fertility. Violence can damage a woman’s reproductive organs, cause miscarriage, etc. Not to mention that a lot of men violent towards a woman are also violent towards his children, which is clearly a biological dead end.

Its almost like this has nothing to do with biology, but is part of society’s toxic values that dictate how “being a man”=”being in control at all costs”. But of course now I’m insinuating that men shouldn’t always be in control of everything, how anti-male of me. Control is often a response to anxiety, expecting “manly problem solving” men to admit to having, never mind sucessfully deal with, anxiety is the height of misandrony. /s

There’s nothing to say about the Price controversy. “Mutual combat” = “not self-defense”
= “dudes in the wrong”. It doesn’t matter what she did; two wrongs don’t make a right.

I used to be naive and think, “why don’t these women just leave”? But then I met a woman who had endured unspeakable abuse and rape at the hands of her husband. She finally left and entered a battered women’s shelter, but he tracked her down within days, and the abuse only got worse. She said she had nowhere to run, as he was a billionaire with unlimited resources at his disposal. She turned to alcohol and got arrested, and said she was relieved because jail was the only place she felt safe from him. She had no money, no support network and was an immigrant – she literally had nowhere to go.

Many people assume that all these women should have seen the signs. Well, she said he was the nicest person she had ever met until after they got married, and it was like a switch flipped. I last saw her 10 years ago, and can only hope that she eventually escaped and her husband is paying for his horrific crimes.

Do Mras really believe that women have mind reading powers and can tell the future? Abusers are sneaky they know how to manipulate people into thinking that they are nice then they show their true colors.

My head is hurting with all of this science stuff that not only it hurts women but men too and yes ‘tech nerds’ can be abusive too. I shouldn’t take all this seriously, they just hate women and don’t see us as people.

As a woman who married two, count them, two abusive men (and left two abusive men), I understand firsthand the psychological dynamics at play.

I do agree with whats-his-name that the women in these relationships bear some responsibility in that they go back to their abuser, and often marry them AFTER they’ve been abused by them. I did it myself.

But I can assure you, it’s not about sex. It has NOTHING to do with sex, money, power, or status. It’s far deeper than that. Far, far deeper.

The only way that women will stop entering abusive relationships is to do DEEP soul searching. It’s taken me an entire life time (I’m in my 60s now) to figure it out. But, thank God, I did. I will never let another man (or anybody) abuse me again.

Donate to the Mammoth!

We Hunted the Mammoth is an ad-free, reader-supported publication written and published by longtime journalist David Futrelle, who has been tracking, dissecting, and mocking the growing misogynistic backlash since 2010, exposing the hateful ideologies of Men’s Rights Activists, incels, alt-rightists and many others.

We depend on support from people like you. Please consider a donation or a monthly pledge by clicking below! there's no need for a PayPal account.

Send comments, questions, and tips for stories to me at dfutrelle@gmail.com, or by clicking here